


The Bitter End

by Suchsmallhands



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Beaches, Boy Love, M/M, Nature, Nautical, Nudity, Oceans, Sea-longing, low angst, setting: beach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 09:53:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6112891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suchsmallhands/pseuds/Suchsmallhands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis follows Harry to the sea, where ideas are both so simple and too grand. Where pirates are two hundred years too late and aspirations stay aspirations. Where there's just enough comfort to dream from and just enough pain to keep dreaming. Though it's all much more simple than it seems, really. </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>  <em>Bitter End: The end of an anchor cable is fastened to the bitts at the ship's bow. If all the anchor cable has been payed out, you have come to the bitter end.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bitter End

"The sky." Louis mumbled, bumping his hand against Harry's arm where he lay next to him. Louis sat on the sand, watching as the sun fell apart on the water. He was wearing shorts tonight, at least. He was selective about his nudity. Harry, however, didn't seem to care at all about clothes this far from any roads or any eyes other than his own and Louis'.  
"I can't watch the sun set tonight, Lou." Harry's voice crooned, his arm bending and laying across his eyes. His tone was nearly whining with thickness, his heart audible in his throat. Louis turned his eyes from the sun, looking at the way it's rays burned across Harry's skin. The arm he had thrown over his eyes was shiny with humidity and salt, a sheen over the black ink tattoos on his arms and body. He lay on his back, his brow creased behind his arm and his eyes hidden from the sea. The sand below them was moist and still drying from the rainstorm earlier in the day. The trees from the forest up the moderate cliffs behind them were hushing and shuttering in the breeze, their leaves sliding together and singing with the wind as it tugged at his hair. Little particles of sand stuck to strands of brunette curls.  
"Then don't." Louis murmured, lifting a hand to brush his fingers across his bare stomach, tracing tattoos and feeling his breath shift under his hands.  
"S'too much." Harry mumbled, his voice slurring and mixed with his heart as he whined quietly to him. "S'too much, tonight."  
Louis let his hand lay flat against his stomach, thumb rubbing comfortingly before lifting his hand and watching the sun dissolve. He couldn't help sparing a glance for the one laying in the sand beside him, the only other man for miles around. The sun, with every morphing moment, cast some new universe across the spread of Harry's skin. At one moment, Louis looked at him and felt grounded, his skin looking on fire in the dying sunlight. Then, within the short thirty minutes that it took for the sun to set, Harry's skin was soft with the after glow of the sun, making Louis feel like it really was too much to look at. He understood. Just too beautiful.  
The sun was gone as Louis sat next to him, the wind lifting his hair gently. The glow on the horizon skipped across the waves as they pushed and pulled, pushed, pulled, on the sand before them.  
"You gonna sing for me tonight, Hazza?" He hummed.  
"Let's swim first." Harry mumbled, hesitantly removing his arm from his face. His face was flushed with heat and the press of his arm against it.  
"Are you still drunk?" Louis mumbled, looking at him as he shook his head.  
"Not that much." He hummed, his voice alone with the sighing of the ocean and the trees. Louis stood up and helped him lift himself up, grunting with his weight as he pulled him up. Harry giggled and leaned against him, making Louis smile. He walked him into the shallows, watching Harry look down at the water and point at rocks and fish as they swam away. Louis turned his back on the horizon and faced him, lifting his arms and falling back into the water. Harry stepped over to him through the water and collapsed like a fawn into the water beside him, the ocean tepid and warm, alive around them as it swished around their shoulders.  
Louis sat with him, legs tangled together, the tame side of the ocean floor firm under their bodies. The moon rose slowly and shone down full and brightly over them both. Harry grabbed hand fulls of sand from the floor and picked them up, poking with his fingers around in the lumps to find shells and sharks teeth.  
Louis lifted his hand and touched his wet curls softly, seeing the way they fell over his shoulders and clung to his damp skin. Louis' heart, for a moment, swelled with a mellow ache looking at him. He lowered his hands into the water around them, waving them around in the ocean. Harry lifted his arms from the water and wrapped them around his shoulders, pressing their heads together. Louis smiled and chuckled at him, wrapping his hands around his biceps.  
Harry stared at him for a little before closing his eyes and swaying with the mindless push and pull of the sea. He blinked his eyes open and kissed him, once then again, tasting him. Louis closed his eyes and thought that he'd never tasted more like Harry. Like salt and his lips.  
Harry padded out of the water with him to the alcove in the cliffs, leading them to their camp. A tiny overhanging of stone in the side of the land, trees swaying a few yards above them. A sheet covered the opening when they let it down, some blankets inside. The rest of their food and everything that fit in the backpack was tucked inside. Louis pulled out the tins and set a fire, trying to make the foul tasting food while Harry plucked on the guitar.  
Louis would walk up to the forest tomorrow, pull on some shoes and try to find fruit. Harry loved eating fruit. Louis normally deterred him from ones that didn't look safe.  
The ocean was sighing quietly to the tune of Harry's guitar as the moon settled in the sky.  
"Here." Louis handed Harry his cup of water and their food, sharing out of the cleanest bowl they had. Harry ate with him, the guitar tucked into his lap. Louis sipped water and then threw the last of his clothing off and into their bag. He didn't feel like wearing it anymore.  
"Song, Harry?" Louis chirped, striding in front of him and laying down in the sand in front of him, leaning back on his elbows. He laughed as Harry fumbled on the strings and his eyes widened, gaze slowing and admiring his body.  
"Yeah." Harry mumbled dumbly, fingers still unmoving as he stared. Louis waited, leaning his head on his own shoulder as Harry blinked and began plucking softly away once again. He'd always said he'd have gotten a music major or been a sailor.  
Harry's voice was full and warm, rasping with texture as he hummed to Louis.  
_I want to write you a song... one as beautiful as you are sweet._  
Louis smiled, he'd heard this one before. He alternated between leaning his head back and looking at the stars and looking at Harry as he plucked away in the night.  
_I want to build you a boat... one that is as strong as you are free._  
Louis sighed and listened as Harry's voice grew and ebbed. The after feeling of the ocean was still pushing and pulling at his body, the strange effect of the ocean after too long in the water. The sand was still beneath him but the water still tricked his mind, calling him back.  
_Everything I need I get from you._  
Louis hummed along, his voice colliding quietly in the night with Harry's.  
Later, when Harry discarded the guitar in favor of laying beside him and tucking his head against his chest, he sighed and mumbled to him.  
"Should have been a sailor, you know?" Harry smiled, his eyes gentle when Louis looked at him. "Or a pirate."  
"Instead you're the most beautiful man on this beach." Louis mumbled, lowering hand to play through his hair.  
"I'm the only man on this beach." Harry wrapped an arm around him. "Besides you."  
"Mmm." Louis mumbled, leaning his cheek against his head.  
"That makes me the second most beautiful." Harry sighed against him. Louis blinked his eyes closed and let his thoughts become quiet with the weight of Harry's words. The part of him that didn't pay his dramatic tendancies any mind just let him speak, happy to lay here with him. The part that thought Harry's heart was the only one worth really listening to, that bit of Louis was stilled by him.  
He thought about things that he normally didn't speak out loud. He tried to use his voice for simple things, for jokes and surfaces. But in his heart, there did live a deeper thought.  
Like the thought that someday he would be gone. That Harry would, too. That someday, they wouldn't be alive on this earth. That this beach would be empty of them, as it had been for thousands of years before and would be for as long after. He thought about the ocean and how apart it was from them, infinite. The sea had been here before the land had grown anything at all. The sea would be here after they were gone and this moment was a memory and then gone from anyone's memory, just an imprint in time.  
But an imprint it was.  
Louis looked away from the ocean. For now he was here, as was the water and the moon, and Harry breathing against his side.  
"Let's go to sleep." Louis murmured, pulling Harry to the bed under tent. Harry groaned and followed him. Louis untied the covering so that it would fall down over the opening.  
"No." Harry complained, laying down in the blankets, making them tacky with sand. "I want the water... the wind."  
"You'll not want the sun burn on your bum in the morning." Louis answered, letting the sheet fall closed.  
"Hm." Harry sighed, falling asleep as he spoke. Louis lay down in the space beside him. Sometime before either had fallen asleep, Harry's arms found their way around him.


End file.
